Partnering with the Community

Making a Difference

We’re challenging the model of community service that begins and ends with students going out to tutor, prepare meals, or build a Habitat house. GPS girls move from the volunteer stage to partnership with community organizations by taking leadership roles, sharing resources, advocating for change, and realizing that the community’s problems, and solutions, are theirs as well.

Our girls hammer nails for Habitat, but they also serve on selection committees; they tutor at community centers, but they also serve on government bodies that plan recognition of our community’s history and its people; they study the ecological issues impacting the Tennessee River’s watershed, but they also work side-by-side with girls from a local charter school who want to collaborate in learning.

Forward-thinking schools like GPS are taking a fresh look at the “public purpose” of independent schools and realizing that creating positive change within the community is also part of the education of future leaders.

Service Leadership

Partnering with Chattanooga community agencies, schools, and volunteer organizations can be a powerful force that occurs when students discover their heart to serve, answer the call to lead, and exercise the courage to engage in improving the larger community.

A broad spectrum of community organizations and components of local governments are part of PIC: East Side Elementary School and Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy; City of Chattanooga Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Northside Neighborhood House; Habitat for Humanity of the Greater Chattanooga Area and the Chattanooga Area Food Bank.

20 Year Partnership with Habitat for Humanity

$23,000 Raised for Cancer Research in 3rd Annual Mission: Remission

All produce from the GPS Garden, maintained by students in Environmental Science, is donated to the Chattanooga Area Food Bank.